John Goldfarb, Please Come Home

  “That’s for the mongoose, dummy, the mongoose!” It was Friday.

  Beside a veined marble pillar sat Overreach, red-faced and pleading. “Markhoff,” he uttered in a melodramatic bass; “when the Great Scorer writes on that final board, it will matter not who won or lost.”

  “Yeah?” sneered Markhoff, licking his fingers. “Now what’s the rest of that quote?”

  “Never mind the rest! It’s your country that’s at stake!”

  “So’s my ass!”

  Overreach eyed him bleakly. “Markhoff—where have I failed you?”

  “You cannot ‘fix’ a Smedley IV computer!” mimicked Markhoff in an insulting falsetto, and then bit spitefully into a mongoose haunch.

  Overreach picked up his glass of rose water and had it knocked from his hand by an intruding elbow from behind. When the CIA chief turned to remonstrate, he found himself gazing into the fiery little eyes of No-Neck Palomides, his fists laden with roast camel hump. “Well, you can’t!” bawled Overreach defensively. “You can’t ‘fix’ a Smedley IV computer!” And then, noticing that the rest of the company was staring at him, he crawled away and hid behind the pillar. “You can’t…,” he blubbered quietly, whimpering and fingering his solid-gold wrist watch.…

  * * *

  “There’s much to be said on both sides,” whispered the sphinx through filtering moonbeams.

  Goldfarb eyed it defiantly, like Shaw’s Caesar, legs apart, arms folded. “That’s not a proper answer.”

  “Listen,” objected the sphinx, “I’m supposed to be asking the riddles. You know—like if you don’t guess the right answer I get to devour you and stuff.”

  “That’s only a legend.”

  “It’s a true legend!”

  “But you’re not a true sphinx; you’re my U-2 plane.”

  The sphinx sulked. “Criminy, you’re not doing this right at all.”

  “Would you rather we discussed compasses?”

  “That was an honest mistake.”

  “Then shut up about the legends! Who’s going to win?”

  “Stuffed mongoose,” begrudged the sphinx. Warm flurries of sand licked at his erratic paws and he would say no more.

  Chapter Forty-six

  AS DISHPAN-HANDED Dawn fingered the edges of Arabian day, Greeks in green and Arabs in Joseph’s coats made ready for combat in makeshift dressing rooms. Above them, in bleachers, spectators twitched expectantly. Behind the Fawz U. bench the stands seethed with rifle-toting Bedouin tribesmen, who were ogling cheerleaders and hooting at the disconsolate Yell King, whose new white bucks pinched his broad, brown feet. Nasser insisted on watching the game from atop a white horse, drawing cries of “Down in front!” and the King’s golf cart droned up and down the side line like a nervous bug with regular habits; “Gung to kill dem,” gurgled Fawz; “gung to kill dem!” Alone on the Notre Dame side, in a tight little knot, prayed the representatives of the National Security Council.

  Suddenly the Fawz U. squad sprinted out from under the bleachers, and the Bedouin spectators leaped to their feet, cracking the welkin with their roars. As the Irish took the field, the National Security Council hissed quietly but with feeling.

  The Vice-President put high-powered binoculars to his eyes. “Hm,” he grunted. “Notre Dame boys seem listless.”

  “Ah, that’s part of their act,” snorted the Secretary of Defense, who secretly coveted his binoculars. Then they all watched silently. Whitepaper, late, edged along a bench with Crazy-Legs Hirsch and sat quietly beside Deems Sarajevo. “Remember,” Sarajevo told him in a soft aside; “you’re responsible.” Whitepaper looked hopefully at Mr. Hirsch. Mr. Hirsch looked ill.

  “One of them seems to have forgotten something,” ruminated the Vice-President, peering through the binoculars, and benches suddenly vibrated in a manner that would have given the Fordham University seismograph a great deal to think about: No-Neck was racing across the field and under the bleachers into the Notre Dame dressing room.

  “There goes another one!” pointed out Sarajevo.

  “I don’t like it,” brooded Maginot darkly. “Everything they do is always part of a plan.”

  “I like your way better,” jibed the Vice-President.

  “Say something in grits,” sneered the Secretary of Defense.

  The Vice-President turned to eye him. “Just for that you don’t get to use the binoculars.”

  “I’m crying,” jeered Maginot. And in fact, he was crushed.

  The Air Force chief of staff leaned over to Cronkite on the bench below and tapped his shoulder. Cronkite looked around. “Didn’t you see Goldfarb in the dressing room?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “What did he have to say?” They all leaned in for the reply. Cronkite paused, looking puzzled: “He—he looked at me rather curiously and said, ‘Play the man, master Cronkite.’”

  “What do you suppose he meant by that?” ruminated Maginot.

  “Might have been code,” ventured the Vice-President, and the Secretary of State eyed him with disgust. The Vice-President caught it. “You got something to say?” he challenged.

  “Jumped out of any cars lately?”

  “Oh, yeah?” taunted the Vice-President. “Now tell us about the Wall, Deems!”

  “Shut up!”

  “Ce-ment mix-er, put-ty put-ty!”

  A whistle from the field interrupted Sarajevo’s reply.

  Maginot raised his binoculars. “Here we go!”

  The Vice-President craned his neck along the benches. “Where the devil is Overreach?” Then he turned, staring up apprehensively into the hopeful eyes of the camel driver plucking at his sleeve.…

  Fawz U. kicked off, end over end but high and far, and the ball sailed down to the two where it was taken by No-Neck Palomides. The rest was summer lightning. The earth shuddered, the sky winced, bodies sprawled, and No-Neck thundered into the end zone. Touchdown.

  Fawz gaped horribly, the National Security Council sat stunned, and Miles Whitepaper leaped to his feet screaming, “It’s a fix! It’s a fix!” Sarajevo glumly pulled him down.

  Jenny stood by Goldfarb and he gave her a hopeless look. “Nothing works,” he groaned. “Nothing ever works.”

  “Poo-poo-poo,” she replied confidently.

  Goldfarb turned to his bench. “Offensive unit!” he barked. “Move it, Your Highnesses!”

  Ammud and three of his brothers adjusted helmet straps and jogged onto the field, taking their positions for kickoff reception. Ammud stood deep, hating a little, wanting a lot. The kick fell into his arms and he ran straight on to his own twenty-seven before his inevitable inundation by a green wave. He limped painfully back to the huddle and called for a Goldfarb original: “Whirling Dervish, off-guard!” The Arabs clapped hands and snaked into formation. And the Notre Dame linemen were suddenly confronted by blue-dyed, wild-eyed Bedouins breathing garlic and ferocity into their faces, snarling like eager hounds thirsting for their throats. A tremor of uncertainty rippled through the green line. “Wahed, tanain…!” barked Ammud. The princes shifted into their “double hump” formation and Notre Dame backs scrambled to compensate. “… klate, yallah!” The ball snapped into Ammud’s hands, bodies churned and twisted, and the prince thrust six yards forward as two of the Irish screamed in mortal agony; Bedouins were biting their legs.

  A referee in a low-brimmed cap rushed in quickly, separating tooth from flesh. “Fifteen yards!” he bawled. “Unnecessary roughness!”

  On the side line Goldfarb groaned. And then watched dumfounded as the referee paced off the penalty against Notre Dame!

  On the opposite site line Markhoff leaped two feet into the air. “You crazy?” he raged. “You freaking fag, you crazy?”

  A wounded No-Neck limped painfully over to the referee. “Look at my leg!” he shrieked in outrage. “Look at my leg!” The referee promptly penalized him for “unsportsmanlike conduct,” and on the side line Markhoff went mad.

  The bewildered Irish huddled,
muttering imprecations, as time was whistled in. Then abruptly one of them broke from the circle of clasped shoulders, raced off the field and under the bleachers. Markoff cursed, baffled, and sent in a substitute from the bench. The referee’s whistle blew. “Illegal substitution!” he bawled, and paced off fifteen yards against Notre Dame. And now Markhoff screeched like a wounded puma and the Notre Dame captain charged the referee, crying, “Illegal substitution is only five yards!”

  Heinous Overreach looked up coolly from beneath his hat brim. “Fawzi Arabian rules.”

  Two more Notre Dame players suddenly spurted off the field, heading for their dressing room. “Time out, time out!” shrieked Markhoff.

  “What’s Notre Dame’s problem?” beamed Goldfarb on the side line.

  Jenny smiled inscrutably. “Ever hear of ‘Delhi belly’?”

  * * *

  “Ess, ess, mein Kind!” cried Markhoff along the Notre Dame side line as he rammed anti-dysentery tablets into the gaping mouths of his assembled charges. He cursed Arab perfidy and swore to buy Israel bonds.

  * * *

  Overreach whistled time in again, and on the next play Ammud was anesthetized by No-Neck Palomides and had to be carried off the field. Goldfarb looked to his bench. And was startled at not finding his second-string quarterback. He cursed softly and beckoned to his last resort. Ibn Caliban leaped up eagerly, clapping on his helmet. It was the moment he had hoped—and arranged—for ever since hearing that No-Neck was reputed to “hate beavers.” This insult to Ibn Caliban’s consort—for so he interpreted it—could not go unavenged. He sprinted into the Arab huddle with a high heart and hideous intentions.

  Ibn Caliban carried the next play to the Notre Dame seventeen. And as both teams huddled for the next down, the Yell King/muezzin cupped hands to his mouth, chanting. A hush fell upon the stands, and while their goggle-eyed opponents watched, the Fawz U. players prostrated themselves on the field and bowed toward Mecca.

  “Time out!” bawled Overreach. “Prayer call!”

  The befuddled Irish regrouped in a very tight huddle, rubbing shoulder pads together for reassurance. “I don’t like it,” one of them uttered nervously. “It’s creepy.”

  “Yeah,” grunted another. “I’d rather play atheists. Then at least we got the edge.”

  “What are they tryin’ to do?” complained a third; “turn this into a holy war?”

  “We lost the last one,” opined a tackle gloomily.

  “Who gives a shit,” growled No-Neck, who didn’t care for this kind of talk.

  “I do,” rebutted the tackle. “There’s something spooky about the whole business.”

  “Speakin’ of spooks,” grunted a guard, “how about that new quarterback?”

  “Yeah, weirdsville.”

  “Come ta think about it,” puzzled No-Neck, “I kneed him twice real good an’ he didn’t even say ‘ouch.’ It don’t seem natural.”

  The tackle who had expressed concern about “spookiness” now began to worry in earnest. Overreach’s whistle sounded, and the game raged on without further recourse to divine intervention.

  For the Irish it proved a penance for sins not yet dreamed of. Dysentery depleted their bench and leg bites threatened to deplete their available supply of blood. And the new Arab quarterback, running like the wind, proved impervious to one of the most fundamental of intimidations. No-Neck alone saved the Irish from disintegration, and with but two minutes of playing time remaining, had carried his mates to a five-point advantage over Fawz U. The score stood Notre Dame 21, Fawz U. 16, and the National Security Council sat numb in the backwash of disaster.

  “We have just lost the Cold War!” uttered Deems Sarajevo.

  “Down in front!” rapped Charles Maginot irritably, as Miles Whitepaper stood up and started pulling at a reluctant Mr. Hirsch’s arm. “This is it!” gritted Whitepaper. “This is what you’ve been training for!”

  “I don’t feel so good,” pleaded Hirsch, stumbling along behind the Middle East expert.

  “Who’s going to tell the President?” intoned the Vice-President hollowly.

  There was a sudden commotion on the field as No-Neck plunged for six yards, then unexpectedly threw down the football and knocked Ibn Caliban senseless with a right cross. No-Neck was thrown out of the game and, as he trotted to the Notre Dame bench, Markhoff seized his arm.

  “You crazy?” bellowed the coach. “What the hell’d you do that for?”

  “He pulled a knife on me!” yelped No-Neck.

  Markhoff slapped the fullback’s face. “Don’t get wise with me!” he snarled.

  * * *

  Ibn Caliban regained his senses and on the next play the Irish fumbled. Fawz U. recovered and the Arabs huddled. “What now?” asked Ibn Caliban, dazed and exhausted of inspiration.

  “Do you boys know the ‘Statue of Liberty’ play?”

  The Arabs suddenly noticed that there were twelve men in the huddle and they gazed with bafflement at Heinous Overreach.

  * * *

  Outside the Fawz U. dressing room Miles Whitepaper tugged savagely at Mr. Hirsch’s arm, but that reluctant worthy refused to budge an inch farther. “All right, all right!” screamed Whitepaper. “We’ll forget about the burnt cork!” Someone in a Fawz U. uniform raced past them, out of the dressing room and out onto the field, breaking into the Arab huddle.

  The Vice-President trained his binoculars on the scene. “What’s the disturbance?” asked Deems Sarajevo.

  “Dunno,” grunted the Vice-President. He watched as the new player booted Ibn Caliban in the seat of his pants, sending him scampering to the side lines, where Miss Beaver materialized magically to embrace and comfort him. The Vice-President lowered the binoculars. “Typical Arab lack of organization,” he harrumphed.

  The Notre Dame squad broke out of their huddle and snaked into formation. Suddenly a lineman stared up at the Fawz U. backfield, his jaw unhinging in amazement.

  “It’s a broad!” he croaked.

  Jenny pulled off her helmet, letting her long, honeyed hair flow thickly over her shoulders, and waved coquettishly at the Notre Dame unit. “Hi, fellas!” she grinned. Then abruptly she took the snap from center and swept right end. One after another of the Fighting Irish charged her but, at the split second before impact, veered off. She skimmed upfield as the gentlemen from South Bend stumbled and fell over one another in their zeal to avoid crushing her, and she skimmed to the Fawz U. thirty, the forty-five, the fifty. The Notre Dame safety man ran abreast of her, his mind a torment of conflicting principles, and together they raced to the Notre Dame forty, the thirty-five, the thirty.…

  “I can’t!” screamed the safety man in agony. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!” He followed Jenny into the end zone, and as Overreach fired the final gun thirty seconds early, she threw herself at him and kissed him.

  Pandemonium broke loose. Rifle-firing Bedouins leaped onto the field whooping and dancing, and Markhoff, in a frenzy, charged out and knocked Overreach to the ground, pummeling him savagely. When the “referee’s” cap flew off, revealing his identity, the Notre Dame coach went completely insane. Both men vanished, like hapless buffalo hunters caught in a stampede, under a writhing ocean of Bedouin feet.

  * * *

  Goldfarb was on his knees in an ecstasy of relief and joy when Fawz droned up, leaping out of his golf cart to embrace him. “Best dem coach in whole world!” he boomed gleefully. Then he cleared his throat and spit with relish. “Tooey on da Irish!”

  Jenny rushed up to Goldfarb and he hugged her wildly. “You nut!” he grinned. “You beautiful, wonderful nut!”

  She leaned out of his embrace and held up a football. “Winning-game ball, coach?” she smiled. But Fawz plucked it from her grasp and fell to kissing it ecstatically while the half-dozen German and Japanese photographers permitted on the scene recorded the moment for posterity and erroneous captions.

  Goldfarb threw a glance at the beaming faces of the National Security Council represen
tatives and then remembered something Guz had once told him. The photographers drifted away, and he waited until they were out of sight before leaning in to the King’s ear. “Your Majesty, remember that business about a U.S. air-base lease in Fawzi Arabia?”

  The King gave the football a final kiss and scowled at the coach. “Tsure! Send me pigskin! Bad t’ing! Fooey on dem!”

  “Might you reconsider?”

  “Spik English!”

  “Think you might change your mind about it?”

  “Na, na, na! Finish!”

  Goldfarb took a deep breath as Jenny clung to his arm, wondering what he was leading up to. “Your Majesty—have you any idea what that football in your hands is made of?”

  “Foot?” hazarded the King, remembering something he had once heard about the Imam of Doom.

  “Not foot,” headshook Goldfarb.

  Fawz kissed the football again. “Glory!” he throated triumphantly.

  “Pure—pigskin!”

  The King’s eye rolled horribly. He dropped the football, gasping. “Na!”

  “Yes.”

  “Foos!”

  “Now my government could probably arrange to kill those pictures that were just taken; I mean the German and Japanese governments are rather grateful to us for winning the war. But suppose—I mean, just suppose the Arab world got a look at their greatest leader kissing a pigskin! And with his arm around a coach who isn’t Armenian at all!”

  “Is blackmail!” roared the King.

  “This is the Middle East,” shrugged Goldfarb.

  Cronkite burst in upon them, seizing Goldfarb’s hand. “Goldfarb, I just want to say that——”

  “Don’t say a word,” interrupted the U-2 pilot. “His Majesty will do all the talking.” He eyed Fawz with meaning, and the King nodded abjectly. Goldfarb picked up the football, took Jenny’s hand, and without another word pushed through the milling throng of celebrants and out onto quieter desert. As they walked toward the palace, Goldfarb held up the football. “Know what this thing’s made of?”

  “Foot?”

  “Huh-uh—glory.”

  Jenny halted, pulled out her Minox, moved back a few feet and put the camera to her eye. “Hold that smile,” she told the U-2 pilot.